Silent Halls
by meruhen
Summary: Sometimes reasons for comas aren't all they seem, and sometimes the cure is much simpler than it seems. InuiYanagi


**Title:** Silent Halls

**Fandom:** Prince of Tennis

**Character(s) or Pairing**: Yanagi, Inui, Yukimura

**Rating:** PG

**Warnings:** Based on a fairytale, so improbable events

**Word Count:** 1780

**Summary:** Sometimes reasons for comas aren't all they seem, and sometimes the cure is much simpler than it seems.

---

Inui hands him a glass and at first Yanagi is hesitant: the color is too strong to be something natural and the vapors rising from the contents don't look promising. Then Inui murmurs a name and says drink, and Yanagi, knowing his friends habit of producing weird drinks with odd tastes that hurt only taste buds, drinks.

The last thing he remembers is Inui, looking at him through those opaque glasses - Yanagi thinks, _you try to keep everyone out with those but it doesn't work with me_ - and Inui's voice, asking how it tasted. Then he is rushing toward the ground, and everything is not what it should be.

-

In all the years he could remember, Yanagi knows of five dreams he's had. Two nightmares, two dreams that caused more discomfort than the nightmares, and one dream he couldn't understand. It haunts him, that dream, because it was the most vivid dream he's ever had, mental images woven into a story he doesn't get.

In the dream, he's walking through a maze of rooms, looking for something. He doesn't know what, in the dream or when he wakes up, but he knows he has to find it and before too much time passes, or else all will be lost. His feet echo on the floors of the rooms, in the halls he wanders, and with the exception of his beating heart, that is the only sound.

He gets closer to where he should be, he knows without proof, because everything feels right, and when he thinks over the dream (which is rare, but often enough) he wonders if that is intuition working, rather than logic, and if that is how players like Yukimura and Kirihara feel on the courts, executing moves.

It doesn't appeal to him, because it's unknown and illogical, the feeling in the dream, and on the days following an analysis of the dream, he plays with less intensity and more cold logic than usual.

Those days he finds Yukimura staring at him sometimes, and it sends shivers down his spine. He doesn't know what to think.

-

He can't wake up, and he knows that: a sleep that is not sleep traps him in its cold embrace, and try as he might, there is no opening of his eyes or sound from his lips.

But even if sleep keeps him trapped, it does not deny the world: sounds and scents make their way through, and touches. Voices - his family, friends, doctors and nurses, speaking softly. The smell of warm cookies (why did they bring me cookies when I can not eat? he wonders) and subtle fragrances. The touch of a hand, cold and mechanical against his body; the caress of his mother's fingers, a friend clasping his hand.

Identifying people is easy; Yanagi's never needed to see to know, and being in the hospital makes no difference. His mother's voice is gentle and soothing, and his father's gruff, the doctors they speak to coolly professional. He can tell the difference between his mother weeping and his sister weeping. His friends are not much harder - Yukimura and Sanada, their voices pitched differently, inflections recognizable even in his state; Kirihara, who scuffles his feet and cries only once; polite tones from Yagyuu, balanced by Niou; Marui's voice bantering and Jackal's temperance.

He knows when they are there, even vaguely has a sense of time, and almost comes to expect his friends with certain things. But even though he knows they are there, can tell the difference between his friends, it helps none: sounds are sounds with no meaning and no impact.

In his half-alive and half-dead state, Yanagi panics. What if this is it for him?

-

The first night he is in the hospital, or what he thinks is the first night, Yanagi dreams again: the dream of the rooms and the halls, but this time nothing feels right. It all feels wrong, so very wrong. Every step is wrong, every turn not the right one. He retraces steps in his dream and tries to figure out what he should do but that doesn't work.

He ends up lost in the maze of halls and in the rooms, too afraid to stay still and too afraid to move, trapped in a situation of his own making with no clues on how to get out of it.

He dreams it again the following nights, each night, and sometimes during the day, until Yanagi, normally so sure of himself, is unsure of whether he is dreaming all the time, imagining his friends and family there in the hospital, or if the dream is reality and he's trapped in some maze forever until eternity.

It frightens him even more, until the thoughts he had been trying to keep at bay consume him: _is this death? Am I dead?_ And he wonders and wonders, but there are no answers and no way to solve the problem, because he isn't sure anymore what the question is.

-

He has a sense of time. Someone used to order and routine would adjust. They bring in no food, there are no nurses asking if he needs help with anything, but after a few weeks, he develops a sense of the day. In the morning a physical therapist comes in, massaging muscles to keep them from atrophying, and his mother visits, just after what he thinks should be the lunch hour, and baths follow that. The old team doesn't visit daily; if he's lucky, one or two come in a day, but there is always a big group one day, what feels like every week.

It makes him wonder if Yukimura hates the visits; since his illness he had avoided hospitals, and Sanada had done the same, both attempting to forget the problems that had once been and were no longer. And that further confuses his mind that is clouded and hazy, driven dark by the thoughts eating away at it: is he imagining them there, to keep some semblance of normal, to keep his mind from accepting what is truth?

The thoughts hover like black clouds, but they have yet to break; there is no downpour yet.

-

He spends most of his time wandering those halls, in his mind, and as days go on, reality drifts: touches are not so firm and voices not so distinct, but Yanagi doesn't care. Or can' care, because he doesn't realize what is happening. Those halls that he never knew, but now knows better than he knows his own house, those rooms - they are his reality, even if nothing feels right anymore.

Yanagi thinks, when he recognizes it, that right is subjective and if he continues the way he has been going, it shall eventually come to be right and everything else wrong.

Something breaks then, but he doesn't realize it and doesn't care. In the end, it doesn't matter. The halls, the rooms still don't develop the feeling of rightness something within Yanagi remembers.

-

The days drift by and he loses count of the nurses and doctors and how many times someone touches him and someone whispers into his ear, because they all blend into each other. Yanagi doesn't even realize the visits from his friends have tapered off, or that it is nearing summer outside. The days grow longer and the nights shorter, and the world moves around him.

Yanagi, in the halls of his mind, even forgets tennis until the smell of sweat lingering on a body brings it back. The memories do not sneak up, subtle and slow, but spring on him unannounced. The halls, once empty and silent, are crowded with memories and sounds: voices laughing, the rhythmic thump of a ball against the courts and a racket, the rackets themselves, and people. People he has forgotten, in his mental wanderings, things he has denied or lost. And he sees that broken bit of himself, and wants to weep.

He stands on the border of death, Yanagi knows: this could be it, but this is not what he wants.

-

There is a strange hand touching his, one he doesn't immediately recognize and it takes moments - long, slow minutes - to process it and he can only process the touch because he hears the voice. The voice is something he can't forget, because it was a voice he knew almost as well as his own, even if years had passed without him hearing it. Yanagi doesn't know what he's saying, but it's enough that he can hear it.

There's shifting, he understands from the noises around him and then there is a pressure on his bed, quickly followed by pressure on his lips. It's gone before Yanagi's mind, made slow by his dream-like state and the wrenching back from the shadows that threatened to destroy him, can process it.

But his body knows, and his body understands: senses are coming back and a part of Yanagi almost wishes it wasn't so - awakening promises pain.

Sounds are no longer sounds without meaning, and when he hears a voice, speaking the first words he can understand in what feels like a century, Yanagi feels enough happiness to compensate for the pain, even if the words are not words of cheer.

"What are you doing?" Yukimura's voice says. "You shouldn't even be here."

Inui responds, he knows, because he hears the response - "I came to visit him" - and Yanagi has to struggle to find his own tongue and speak; at first, it is only a croak that leaves him, his voice unused to such usage.

"You almost killed him." Yukimura's voice again, and Yanagi remembers: the drink that landed him here, but it couldn't have been the drink because others had tasted it before him. It doesn't matter though, because he's awake now, even if he has spent too much time sleeping.

"Seiichi," he croaks, louder than before, but barely a whisper, and shifts, and something draws the attention of the two, one standing at the foot of the bed and the other just inside the doorway. The argument is forgotten.

"You're awake," Yukimura whispers, and he is the first to move, turning for the doorway, yelling, as he was rarely known to do. But even yelling, Yukimura commands respect and a nurse comes running.

There's a moment before the nurse reaches Yanagi's side, and he looks from his once-captain to his former best friend, and eyes meet eyes: normally hidden, both of them, but this time nothing stands between their gazes.

"It was a stupid fairytale," Inui murmurs, and Yanagi laughs because there is no time then to answer and plenty of time afterwards.


End file.
